Monthly Archives of: October 2010

This was the most pain in the ass cooking project yet! 😛 Good thing the internet was down all day so I had ample time and no distractions to get it done. The final product didn’t taste too bad either. It was thicker than a brownie and pretty rich. I highly doubt I will eat any more of it.

Sachertorte is a cake from Austria. It was first made by a cook named Franz Sacher, who made it for an Austrian prince. Austria is famous for the Vienna Boys Choir and Lipizzaner horses, which are pure white horses that perform in shows in Vienna. They speak German there and “Hello” is “BruB Gott”, which is pronounced groose gott. Go figure…

So maybe I didn’t love the cake but I did try something new for dinner & I did LOVE it. Super yum. It will definitely make it onto my dinner menu in the future.

It is bok choy & green beans stir fried & covered in a teriyaki tofu dressing, served on top of jasmine rice. Oh and toped with sautéed sliced onions. The most exciting part of the whole dinner was that I made the rice in my new Rice Cooker Plus that I earned for FREE from hosting a Pampered Chef party at my house. The rice was perfect and it took 10 minutes to cook. That is almost as exciting as the 8 minute cake. Almost.

I haven’t shared this with anyone other than my husband yet but I do believe I am going to make a cook book sometime in the future. I have no definite plans for when I am going to start but it is something I would really like to do. I cook. A LOT. And I am always trying new stuff and the things I try I generally change to make it better, per my opinion. 😛 My friend, Karen wrote a cookbook. One of my favorites! And she self-published it. So I am going to aspire to try and do one myself. One day.

Michael bought Haden a new piggie bank that talks and adds up the money put into it so Haden can see what he is putting in and how much it is. It is pretty cool. So now he is getting an allowance. Oh, he is so grown up. 25 cents a day, unless he does something exceptional to lose it. He is quite excited about it. They have been doing it together everyday when Michael gets home from work.

Addison has an obsession with apples now. She loves gnawing on them. I think it feels good to her mouth but they seem to just make her generally happy. She is a happy girl when she has an apple. So now I find myself buying tons of green apples because they are harder and giving her slices and freezing some of them too. She has gotten really good at working them down now though, especially since her 2 front bottom teeth are growing in pretty good. I have to watch that sneaky girl.

For the first time EVER Michael and I will be apart for a night. We don’t even sleep in the same bed right now because of the kids being in the bed but I know his not being here will make it hard for me to sleep that night. 🙁 He is going to New York for a day! Fun for him. I never get to go anywhere cool. He is flying with his boss on Monday. It is a great opportunity work-wise. His boss wants him to be a part of some big meeting going on. Recently Michael got moved over to another project and it is starting to make money for the company! His boss is very happy with him and has flat out told Michael “If you make me money, you will make more money.” So we are hoping that this is the beginning of great things to come. Finger crossed. 🙂

I have really been slacking lately on the things I want to do, but I am determined to try and get my priorities straightened out and try to make my life some what manageable! I think I need to set aside designated times that I will work on my volunteer stuff & my business stuff, then the rest is focus on family time. Or even maybe a little ME time in there. That would be nice. OMG! Wouldn’t that be nice??!!!

I haven’t been putting enough effort into my time with Haden, mostly just letting him run around the house and play or letting him watch TV. Now it is time to get over and start trying to get my crap together. Today we did actually manage to do some “homeschool” stuff, somewhere in the midst of, cranky baby that won’t nap and ALL the Monday cleaning, which really I’m not even done with yet. I have a very scary looking mountain of laundry in my bedroom that I am going to try and tackle after dinner.

Today we took some leaves that we had put inside our flower press and made something with them. They were actually leaves that we collected at the park in Woodstock we visited a few weeks back with the homeschool group. Maddie and Grace helped too. With collecting leaves, I mean.

We made a tree! And talked about the different parts of a tree, types of animals that might live in one and fruits that grow on trees. After that he lost interest. 😛

It has actually been a fairly crazy couple of weeks with everything that has been going on. Last week was the Baby Steps teacher training, which now has me all pumped up. Hopefully there will be so craft nights in my near future so that I can spruce up some of my teaching aids. Addison went to the whole thing with me and was the best baby ever. She took some really awesome naps. I wish she would take naps like that here. I love my little girl. She is such a fun baby when she wants to be. 😛

Then I had a busy week, teaching the last class of a private class series & a homebirth class, had a CBE meeting that felt a lot more like a GNO, plus 2 sick kids thrown into that mix. I would have also had 2 play practices for the play Birth but it got canceled, which was slightly disappointing and relieving all at the same time.

By Saturday we were ready for a family day of togetherness. We went shopping at a thrift store and the Goodwill to find costumes for Melissa’s Halloween party next weekend, Fangri La. I am so excited about it. I found the perfect dress and shoes, so that Michael and I can be Jessica and Hoyt from True Blood. We are going for a date night look. 😛 I just need to buy some hair spray, a hair comb, some fangs and blood and we are good to go!

After shopping we spent some time at Chastain Park to decompress…

Me and little butt spent some time relaxing on our blanket and playing with anything we could get our hands on… well mostly she did.

While Haden pretended he was Spiderman climbing through a web.

Then yesterday was the BOLD Red Tent, which was fun but I wish I had been sans family so I could have enjoyed it more. I missed lots of the stories, having to go in and out. In and out.

Ha ha! We decorated our “Fall” table today. Thanks to my sister and BIL for all the cool Fall crafts that Haden got for his birthday. We had fun doing them for our table. I was talking to Haden about how the leaves change colors and he looked out the living room window and got all excited because he saw a red tree. 😛

After a week of begging and pleading with the boy I was finally able to get him to cook some African peanut bread with me.

So we learned… that most Africans live in the countryside and grow their own food. Droughts and heavy rains sometime ruin crops and people don’t have enough to eat. 🙁 Peanuts are known as groundnuts in Africa and are one of the main crops grown. In many places they grind maize or corn & then cook it to make a thick porridge called “mealie meal”. When I told Haden that he repeated me and said “Nooo…”, then giggled, which I think was his way of saying he thought “mealie meal” sounds funny.

It has been a super busy week because I had a Pampered Chef part at my house earlier in the week, which was very stressful for me but went really well. 🙂 Then today and yesterday I have been gearing up for the Baby Steps teacher training this weekend. I am SO excited about it! Cupcakes are cooling as I type… Haden is very anxious to ice them so he can have one.

SO… although I have been reluctant to continue down the path of being a homemade baby food maker, mostly from laziness… 😛 I decided to keep pushing forward and gave making pears a try again. That time I actually cooked them long enough so they pureed just fine. Then I thought… this isn’t so bad if when you get done the food is actually edible.

Today I made butternut squash puree. I was surprised at how tough it is to cut through a butternut squash. lol. It isn’t something I have ever tried making before. I wasn’t even sure how to cook it so I had to Google. LOVE that Google.

You cook it in the pan with the “meat” facing down in about an inch or 2 of water. Then I just scooped it out with a spoon and tossed it in the blender. Addison made little happy noises while she ate some so I guess that means she likes it!

Spooned it into my ice trays and then froze it. Easy Peasy.

My friends did tell me so. 😛

Michael is off right now picking up Haden’s very first bed! I am so excited. I know he is going to be thrilled when he wakes up in the morning and sees it. Hopefully that will inspire him to actually sleep in it. My fingers are crossed. I can’t wait to take him shopping to pick out his “big boy” bedding for his new bed.

Oh, and Addsion has her first tooth coming in! Looks like the one right next to it will be making an appearance soon as well. 🙂

Our cooking project for this week was Tabboule, which come from Lebanon, on the Eastern side of the Mediterranean Sea.

It is made up of cracked wheat, tomatoes, cucumber, green onions and herbs. Tossed in a lemony dressing and served on top of lettuce.

My little world book didn’t include too much information on Lebanon. I did learn that they speak Arabic there and “Hello” is “Salaam a alaykum”, which I know I will never remember. Seems kinda long just to be “Hello”. 😛 I did find it interesting that people have been living in the city of Byblos for about 9,000 years, making it one of the world’s oldest cities.